My Philosophy & Main Goal as a Child Sleep Consultant
Can you guess what my main goal is when working with families? I’ve put a lot of thought into this and it’s such a critical piece as to why I do what I do. I encourage you to ask the same question of any sleep consultant you plan to work with.
The most important thing to me when I work with families is that we get their child’s sleep to a place in which it no longer causes the family stress. That means that the parents feel confident in their child’s ability to sleep and also confident in the schedules and routines put in place. They are confident in how and when they respond to their child and have clear expectations around their child’s sleep.
When I talk about expectations, I want to be clear that sleep is not linear. If we go through the process of sleep training a baby (past 4 months of age) and follow the plan with consistency, it should be expected that you will hit bumps along the road. The first two years of a child’s life, in particular, are full of many milestones, teeth and changes. You can expect that some of these will disrupt sleep. But if we can set a solid sleep foundation for a child (and their parents), it sets a baseline for parents to feel out when something is a little ‘off’ and gives a family confidence in their child’s ability to bounce back after a disruption.
Now, does every child need to be sleep trained? Absolutely not. If the way your child sleeps works for you and does not contribute stress to your family dynamic, that’s great and there’s no need to intervene when things are working well. But there are many times when parents are at a stage in which they know that something needs to change. Whether that’s with schedules, changing the sleep environment, going through the process of sleep training and more, they need help, guidance and support to make some changes that relieve stress and get the whole family more sleep.
All families and children are different with their own unique dynamics. So getting to a stage where your child’s sleep is not causing stress can look different from one family to the next. It certainly doesn’t just mean that a child has to sleep through the night. One family may decide to continue giving some milk to their one year old when he wakes once a night because they have another child and find it less stressful to quickly feed the younger child than let him cry and potentially wake up the sibling.
One family may need to adjust their toddler’s late bedtime and have her learn to fall asleep independently but are ok if she sneaks into bed for early morning snuggles.
One mom may have a baby who sleeps great at night but struggling with short naps.
Hopefully you get the idea. Good sleep means different things to different families and can be achieved in different ways. Sleep is also personal and in a way, intimate. I just want as many families as possible to have confidence in their child’s sleep that it doesn’t cause stress to the family.
In this busy, constantly-changing world, it’d be nice as parents if we had one less thing to stress about. Maybe the world would be a bit of a different place if everyone were getting a good night sleep on the regular?
If you are in the place where you know something needs to change and you’re feeling stress around your child’s sleep, let’s connect. I’ll create a personalized sleep plan based around your child and your goals and support you along the way.